


she keeps me warm

by erebones



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Graduate School, IPRE-Era, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 16:28:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12136464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: Lup pulls Lucretia away from a late-night experiment for some much-needed snuggles.





	she keeps me warm

**Author's Note:**

> and the award for the most cliche fic title goes to.....

“Hey, stranger.”

Lucretia’s eyes flew wide open and she inhaled stickily like she was waking from a long sleep. The lab was brightly lit, as always, but beyond the half-open shades the night sky was an inky black, softened from below by the city lights off on the horizon. She checked her wrist and remembered she left her watch in her locker.

“Time is it?”

“Gone three.” Lup plucked a lab coat off the hook by the door and bundled it on over her ratty old hoodie, faded to a rust-pink through years of wearing and washing. The IPRE logo on the front had peeled and flaked so bad that Lucretia could hardly make it out. “Can I help?”

Lucretia’s breath caught a little. “You don’t have to. It’s boring stuff.”

“Still.” Lup’s galaxy-print leggings stuck out from underneath her labcoat as she shuffled forward in her pink bunny slippers. Not exactly lab uniform material, but at least they were close-toed, technically. She wound her mass of silvery ombre hair back into a knot at the base of her skull and put her hand on Lucretia’s back. It was very warm. Lucretia hadn’t noticed the chill in the lab until just this second. “What are we looking at?”

Lucretia leaned back from the microscope and beckoned her closer. “Microorganisms from the antigrav chamber. They’re replicating insanely quickly, and they—”

“Hang on.” Lup pulled back from the eyepiece and bent down to look at the label stuck haphazardly to the side of the petri dish. “Luc, this is from Taako’s weird summer project, isn’t it?”

“Er—yes, I know he was finished with it but I thought there could still be value to… why are you looking at me like that?”

Lup shook her head. “I just can’t believe you’re sitting here, at three AM on a Friday… I mean Saturday, doing _Taako’s work for him_ while he’s sitting in the faculty lounge blowing smoke rings into his boyfriend’s dingaling—”

“ _Lup!_ ”

“Okay, maybe I made that last part up,” Lup admitted, propping her hip on the edge of the table. She peered into the microscope again, and a curling strand of hair slipped free from her bun, drifting gently against her neck. Lucretia swallowed and resisted the urge to tuck it behind her ear. “Does this really need to be watched twenty-four sev? These little dudes seem to be doing just fine on their own.”

“I guess,” Lucretia said slowly. Her head felt full of cotton fluff, and not in the good way. She pushed her glasses back into her hair, stripped off her gloves, and rubbed her eyes with fingers that smelled of talcum powder and rubber. “What are you doing up, anyway?”

“I was up late testing some stuff with Davenport.” Lup shrugged, and her lab coat slumped off one shoulder. She looked as sleepy as Lucretia felt, rumpled and soft around the edges, the outer edges of her lips stained berry-pink with old lipstick. Lucretia wanted to touch her thumbs to the shadows beneath her eyes. Wanted to make her smile. Instead she slipped off the stool and cracked her back with a grimace.

“I’ll just pop it in the freezer and take a few notes to let Taako know what I did.”

Lup squinted at her sideways. “By _a few notes_ you don’t mean an essay, right?”

Lucretia scoffed and grabbed a slip of paper, pointedly scribbling something down. “There. Satisfied, Professor?”

Lup snatched the paper out of her hand and smirked. “Good enough, kiss-arse. Now let’s go, I’m breaking you out of here.”

“I’m not a _prisoner_ , Lulu,” she demurred, but she allowed Lup to hook their elbows together and lead the way out of the lab. At this time of night they were the only ones in the building; the silent, white-lit halls were almost eerie, polished to a sheen by the midnight cleaning crew, and Lucretia found herself straying even closer to her tall, willow companion.

It was funny; for being twins, Lup and Taako didn’t act much alike. Taako was redolent and resplendent, taking life slow—but not easy, definitely not. He was as hard a worker as any of the rest of their graduate team, picking up projects faster than he could put them down. But he was better that Lup at compartmentalizing. As soon as the clocks hit eight on a Friday, he was out of the lab and dragging his boyfriend off campus to have a good time, usually at a restaurant, sometimes to his own apartment, sometimes to the faculty lounge, making use of it when all the professors had gone home.

Lup was different. Was more… like Lucretia, if she dared think it out loud to herself. She was bad at “turning it off,” as Magnus said, was infamous for getting embroiled in magical experiments that went on for hours on end, even days, chain-reacting into one another until she emerged from her lab with bloodshot eyes and singed hair and a crazed, delighted grin on her face that spoke of another breakthrough.

Lucretia’s studies weren’t nearly as explosive or exciting, but she understood the penchant for getting lost in one’s work. She was still a little shocked that Lup had even noticed her. Sure, they were two of a handful of students working under Dr. Davenport in the IPRE program, but their branches of study were different enough that they probably could have gone the whole eight years without hardly speaking. But Lup _had_ noticed. Had even started to take Lucretia under her wing, which was an odd experience given that Lucretia was a few years older and _technically_ higher-ranking, being Dr. Davenport’s personal aide and protege, one of the few on a confirmed fast track to being hired on once she graduated.

Lup didn’t seem to care about any of that. Which was… refreshing. Sometimes Lucretia felt as if her preferential treatment—fairly earned, of course—had built a wall between her and the other students. Taako in particular enjoyed ribbing her, which she had learned to take in due course. She had expected the same from Lup, but instead had found in her a friend. A best friend, some might say. Lucretia had never had one of those before. Not a best _girl_ friend, anyway. She was still getting used to it.

Campus was deserted, too, although she could hear the faint strains of music coming from the quad. Lup gave it a wide berth, so she followed her lead—not as if she had much choice. Lup’s arm in hers wasn’t aggressive, but it was _decisive_ , and strangely comforting. Lucretia had no desire to pull away.

“This is my room,” she blurted when they arrived, bleary with sleep and yet keyed up from the walk and Lup’s persistent, benevolent presence.

Lup raised her eyebrows one at a time. “Did you not want to go to your room?”

“I mean—I do, I guess. I…” She shook her head and rubbed her brow with her free hand, confused by her own confusion. “I guess I thought we were going to yours?”

Lup smiled slowly. “You want to sleep over?”

Lucretia blushed. “It’s silly. Nevermind.”

She began to pull away, but Lup’s hold on her tightened imperceptibly and she froze with her hand halfway to the doorknob.

“C’mon then. I’ve got a box of wine that needs finishing. And I fixed the featherlight spell on my hammock so it’s ready for a chill-out sesh.”

Lucretia attempted a few token protests, but Lup had already made up her mind. They walked down the wall together to Lup’s rooms. As the only female students in the IPRE program currently, they had an entire floor to themselves. Technically there were five suites to a floor, but Lup had done some clever work with portals and made it into one giant, sprawling apartment. She had insisted on a special knock for the portals between their private spaces, but they rarely used it, moving between one another’s apartments freely. Especially since Lup had installed her giant hammock. Lucretia had fallen asleep reading there more than once.

Inside Lup’s place, they kicked off their shoes and made themselves comfortable. Lup opened all the windows and stripped out of her leggings, and walked around the apartment in hoodie and briefs while Lucretia curled up on the hammock and breathed in the scent of fresh-lit candles and the faint tang of sulfur that followed Lup’s spells.

She jerked awake a few minutes later to Lup curling around her from behind. The featherlight spell was well-balanced and the hammock hardly swayed at all. Lup’s arm draped across her waist and Lucretia’s heavy lids fell shut again.

“Is that a no on the wine, then?”

“Mmmmmm tomorrow,” Lucretia mumbled. Numbers swirled around her head and were subsumed in the warmth of Lup against her back, and feel of her fingers in Lucretia’s short hair.

**Author's Note:**

> This was mostly just me playing around with backstory ideas for the team's early IPRE days. Might go deeper into this at some point, or I might just give in and do a Hogwarts AU lmao. We'll see. Thanks for reading <3


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